Democracy is arguably ethically superior because democratic openness fosters truth-telling as a public value, yet democratic citizens typically distrust their representatives and suspect them of peddling lies or half-truths. This paradox arises because democratic rulers are conceived as servants of a sovereign people who may electorally replace them. Servants must often expediently and hypocritically tell the sovereign what it wants to hear rather than unpalatable truths. Yet popular sovereignty provides a key to distinguishing those lies that democrats will tolerate and those they will not, namely any whose tendency or intention is to usurp the sovereignty of the people.

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